Thursday, January 24, 2008
AN IMMIGRANT STORY
I was 14 when the Mustang debuted. My best friend in high school had a red '65 convertible in which we cruised many a Houston street on muggy weekend nights. I especially liked the '67-'68 versions and when the retro 2005 Mustang came out, I was hooked.
Who could have imagined in the mid-60's in the midst of the Vietnam War that the chief engineer on the retro version 40 years later would be a kid living in Saigon when the American military evacuated. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Hau Thai-Tang grew up in Saigon during the war. Dad taught school and mom worked for Chase Manhattan bank in Saigon. When the war was winding down and the US was evacuating, some Chase people offered to help emigrate Hau's family. He was nine years old.
They were told "You're going to America. Listen to this radio and when you hear White Christmas by Bing Crosby, you'll have an hour to get to the airlift destination." They could each take one carry-on bag and kept them lined up at the door in readiness.
One day in April 1975 White Christmas came on the radio. (How surreal is that?) They sped to the airport and got on an American military plane. The next day Saigon fell.
His hope had been some day to maybe own a car. But now this Vietnamese war refugee has engineered the most iconic American car. While in some ways this is a bizarre story, it seems to me to be a most American story. We all came from somewhere else to a land where any kid can grow to be anything.
Who could have imagined in the mid-60's in the midst of the Vietnam War that the chief engineer on the retro version 40 years later would be a kid living in Saigon when the American military evacuated. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Hau Thai-Tang grew up in Saigon during the war. Dad taught school and mom worked for Chase Manhattan bank in Saigon. When the war was winding down and the US was evacuating, some Chase people offered to help emigrate Hau's family. He was nine years old.
They were told "You're going to America. Listen to this radio and when you hear White Christmas by Bing Crosby, you'll have an hour to get to the airlift destination." They could each take one carry-on bag and kept them lined up at the door in readiness.
One day in April 1975 White Christmas came on the radio. (How surreal is that?) They sped to the airport and got on an American military plane. The next day Saigon fell.
His hope had been some day to maybe own a car. But now this Vietnamese war refugee has engineered the most iconic American car. While in some ways this is a bizarre story, it seems to me to be a most American story. We all came from somewhere else to a land where any kid can grow to be anything.
